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Treat Yourself! Britain's Growing Leisure Spend*

Treat yourself! Britain’s Growing Leisure Spend

While a large
proportion of our wages will inevitably go towards the mundane essentials; mortgage/rent, house bills, phone contracts, gym memberships, internet, Kids, food etc; it’s nice
to be able to treat ourselves every now and again!

Whether it’s a spa
escape with friends or a mid-week meal out or even a quick beer or glass of wine on the way home from work.; How much do we Brits actually spend per year on leisurely pursuits in comparison with our European neighbours? Hotel
linen provider Shortridge Laundry does the math:

Eating out

In 2016, eating out was
recorded as the most popular leisure activity in the UK – an
astonishing 85% of UK consumer spending was spent on going out to eat
in the first quarter of 2016. On average, Brits eat out twice a week, spending £44 per week in total. Over the course of
a month, this equates to £176 or a staggering £288,000 over the
course of a lifetime. Those aged between 18 and 29 spend double this
figure, racking up £88 per week in restaurant bills per week, or
£352 per month. Only the Spanish eat
out more regularly than us Brits, with a total food and beverage
market worth of $133 billion. Italy follows in third followed by
Germany and France.

Hotel stays

New research from Point
A Hotels has shown that the typical Brit will spend £62,000 on a
total of 378 different hotel stays during their lifetime. When broken
down on a night-by-night basis, Brits will spend an average of £52
per night on a hotel. This suggests that budget and mid-range hotels
are most popular in the UK. This is further
confirmed by additional research that suggests that 70% of hotel
guests never make use of the hotel gym or spa. If they’re not using
them, perhaps Brits are choosing to spend less on hotels that don’t
have these facilities? However, it’s a
different story for Swiss travellers. According to a report by Kayak,
72% of Swiss travellers will book a luxury hotel.

Beautification

After a long week at
work, pampering is always a good idea! Whether it’s heading to a
spa or impulse buying the newest mascara, how much do Brits spend on
beauty each year? According to research
by TotallyMoney.com, the average Brit will spend £4,454 on
beautifying themselves, including haircuts, makeup, gym memberships,
clothes and beauty treatments. However, this figure varies by region
— in Leeds, the beauty spend climbs to £7,000 per year, while in
London it stands at £6,300.

According to 2014
statistics, European consumersspend €129 on cosmetic products per
year. Norway has the highest average cosmetics spend, nearing €250.
While these figures seem relatively low, they do not take into
account other expenses such as spa and beauty treatments. More
recently, it was recorded that the cosmetics industry was the
top-performing category in the UK Health and Beauty sector – sales
were up £100m from 2015-2017.

The little extras

Aside from eating out,
enjoying hotel stays and spending money on making ourselves look
beautiful, there are a few little extras that add up to big spending
over the year too.

Buying Clothes

Despite popular opinion
that women love to shop, recent research in the UK revealed that it
was men who spent the most. On average, men spend £100 on clothes,
compared to women who spend £74. The survey also showed that men are
better at investing in their clothing whereas women have more
garments in their wardrobe that they don’t wear. All in all, the
average Brit spends £1,042 on clothes each year. Looking across Europe,
it was found that Estonia spent the highest percentage of their
household consumption expenditure on clothing and footwear at 6.7%.
Not far behind is Italy with 6.3% and the UK with 5.7%.

Spending Time at the Cinema

Although streaming
entertainment at home is gaining popularity, it seems as though we
are still treating ourselves to a trip to the cinema now and then.

Globally,
in 2015, expenditure at the cinema added up to between $38 and $40
billion (£29m - £31m). In the UK in particular, it was found that
we only spend around £19 per head annually on or at the cinema –
apparently it is the high cost of cinema tickets that deters us which is no surprise to anyone i'm sure. In terms of the frequency
of going to the cinema, the French visit on average 3.3 times per
year, Germany 1.5 per annum and in the UK, we head to the pictures 2.6 times a
year on average.